Inner-city secondary schools facing headteacher shortage

Secondary schools could face a shortage of headteachers because of a fall in applications to a 'superheads' training scheme. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Schools in England's poorest neighbourhoods could find themselves without a headteacher in a few years' time because of a dramatic decline in applications to a government-backed scheme that trains the future leaders of "challenging" comprehensives.

The Guardian has learned that just 122 teachers – fewer than a third of last year's applicants – are seeking a place on a programme that coaches "superheads" to lead and transform schools in the most disadvantaged areas.

The government has ploughed up to £7m into the Future Leaders scheme since it started four years ago to plug a shortage of heads in inner-city schools with high proportions of pupils on free school meals.

Under the scheme, teachers quit their jobs and spend a year working with the leaders of a comprehensive in a deprived area. They are given a coach and extra classes to equip them with the skills they need to improve standards and behaviour. They are then helped to find a permanent post in a similar school.

But the programme has received just 122 applications, compared with 374 this time last year, and the closing date is in a fortnight. Last year, just one in seven applicants was selected. If the same standards are applied, a mere handful could make it on to the course this year.

Heath Monk, Future Leaders' chief executive, said he feared that in three or four years, the most challenging schools would be without a headteacher, or at least without one with the drive and motivation to turn a school around.

A dire shortage of applicants for headteacher posts and a high proportion of headteachers reaching retirement age has made it harder for state schools to recruit teachers to the top job than it was a quarter of a century ago, research published last month by Education Data Surveys showed. This is despite offers of six-figure salaries and perks. Schools in poor neighbourhoods have the greatest trouble recruiting headteachers. Monk said the lack of applications to the Future Leaders programme risked "exacerbating the headteacher shortage".

Those who are selected on to the programme usually fast-track their way to being a headteacher within four years. "The teachers who want to take up headship posts will not be ready to do so," Monk said. "The most challenging schools will be without a head or without one with the drive or motivation to turn them around. Inner-city schools find it hardest to attract talent.

"The quality of leadership is absolutely directly related to the success of a school. If you have an outstanding head, then the school will become outstanding. If you have an inadequate head, then the school will become inadequate."

Monk attributed the sharp fall in applications to teachers worried about the threat of public spending cuts on schools and deciding to stay in their current jobs. "Teachers are staying put. We have heard the politicians say that the schools budget is protected, but schools are risk-averse."

John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said teachers had been discouraged by suggestions by Ed Balls, the schools secretary, that schools could save money on senior staff if they federated. "You might have a headteacher and a team of deputy heads working across the different schools," Balls said last year.

Dunford said headteachers were more accountable, vulnerable and had more responsibility than in the past and that this might put some applicants off. "But the fact remains that being a head is a wonderful job and holds more opportunity to influence the lives of young people than any other job."

A spokesman from the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: "The fact is, headteacher vacancy rates have been low, stable and below 1% for the past 10 years, and the number of teachers setting their sights on becoming a headteacher is at a historic high. That's thanks to pay and training being better than ever before, our groundbreaking measures to cut workloads, and leadership teams which have never been stronger in supporting heads."